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tv   [untitled]    October 1, 2012 11:00pm-11:30pm PDT

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and dhl, ups come into existence and had to deal with routing and i talked to him and we don't have that and that's one thing we should do and drivers not providing notice and not show up. that doesn't work well and it's difficult to weigh in on the issue of children should be provided with free passes. i think joel is right and why can't kids go to school in their neighborhoods and you have to weigh it in reality and whether children can eat or go to school on muni and that's a difficult choice and if we do it we should mean's test. >> all right. ms. gavin. >> well, it's very interesting. i think that muni does need a lot of work and i have used muni, public transportation all the while i have lived here for almost 15 years, you about i
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can compare it from other places where i lived so there are -- i think management is one of the biggest issues because it's leadership and i think muni really can work, but you have to want it to work. it is your voices that are very important and will get muni work. it works in los angeles. over a million people a day use public transportation and during the commuting hours the buses are moving every seven minutes so it can work. i have seen it work in other places. the issue with the free bus pass if we have them all of the children are entitled to them because their parents are paying into it, and if not i know it could be an issue with money but i'm not just for giving a pass and there is no correlation it's going to improve and kids are going to go to school so i am kind of hesitant on that. thank you. >> all right. thank you. our
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next question, parking, parking meters. what is your position on variable rate parking meters and metered street parking on sunday? we will begin with mr. rogers. >> well, parking on sundays in the portolla valley area is a bad idea because people stay there all day. i am sure everybody will agreeing with that, but when it comes to parking i think that this is the solution to the short fall of muni is to provide tickets and be able to give this money to muni to able to make it run better, to have it have more money, and at this point in time i think they have hired 40 additional policemen and they become more aggressive in their ticketing style in order to be able to pay for their $40,000 year living, and i think it's
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getting to be too much. i am against all these tickets and i think they should go back to a simpler time when they didn't have as aggressive ticket policy. >> all right. thank you. >> that supposedly generates 2.5 million dollars but i believe san francisco is one of the number one tourist attractions in the united states. it generates $9 million tax revenue a year and the buddhists say in heaven and hell is on everyday. you come into the city, can you go church and come out and go to westportal and get a ticket. i think that is morally wrong and gouging and gouging and eventually it's just bad pr and for the generating 2.5 million
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dollars on this budget it's senseless and it's just more government putting the throats -- putting the boots on the throat of the average day citizen. >> all right. thank you sir. mr. yee. >> so let's face it. let's not make our parking meters the atm for the city. i mean we really need to support the notion that we don't want meters to operate on sunday, especially in our district, district seven. the business corridors need access to customers and when you charge on sundays and parking meters the same people shopping and at restaurants they're going to go somewhere else. they're going to go to stonestown and the malls and if you believe in the small businesses in the community then we need to
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support the notion that we're not going to allow for parking meters to operate on sunday. >> okay. thank you mr. yee. mr. bye. >> i completely oppose sunday and late night meters and our district. i agree with norman that it really will literally drive people out of the area and down to south city or some other area in which people want to come to this part of town for the small town experience that we have and shopping in westportal or walking around getting lunch at ocean or some place like that, but it's also speaks to something i mentioned earlier. it's another way that city hall is butting heading with residents and businesses. when residents feel threatened by the government they don't trust the government and we need less of the head butting and
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yes the city needs money but we can't do it on the backs of small business and the threats to residents and i completely oppose the meters on sundays and late nights. >> mr. crowley. >> in district seven i think it's necessary to dismiss this idea all together and let's not forget the holidays and they hit them as well. a one size approach doesn't fit this and i suggest the parking lots at the ball field and we do dynamic pricing and that is one solution that is dense and know they're going to pay for parking and looking for solutions to fit their car in for free. only in areas where there is the retail wrap that should happen but in district seven it's a disincentive for the merchants. >> we are good at shooting the
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goose and in the foot and muni says we have a deficit let's gouge the drivers. are you going to drive anywhere? no. you're going somewhere else and where is that revenue that we need? and by the way give free passes to youth and expand it from there, so we gill the gooses and shoot the drivers in the foot by digging a deeper hole for yourself and why don't we increase revenue and ticket the people that are riding muni and not paying? enforce that. >> thank you. mr. garcia. >> it sounds like i watch a lot of tv. there is a guy that appears on channel 26 when they do the board of supervisors and he has a wrap about silly hall. this is one of those silly things that we're doing. i think if you were to do cost
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benefit curves it probably cost the city money and when you ticket people so much for parking meters and have them inappropriate times and past 6:00 p.m. and on sundays and hurts businesses and therefore the net revenue to the city is less than it would otherwise and as far as variable rate parking i think that is a good idea. in some areas it's harder to find a meter and when you do you should pay more for it and i love the fact you can have an app on the phone and in danger of going over the time you can feed the meter from your phone. good idea. >> thank you sir. >> well, there is something i would like to add that is not part of the question so there are three things i would look into. i am absolutely against on sundays. i think it's just ridiculous and i think you should be able to want to go out and not really have to look at your watch and if you're in the
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restaurant or whatever, and i think it does drive business away from small businesses and go to the peninsula and the shopping malls and so forth, and also i think we have to look at -- i think it should be mandatory that everyone could have a parking permit for their neighborhood if they live in the city. i think they should be to have that and we have to look at the issue of the disabled placards. i do have one, and i have seen a lot of abuse with them. i think that is part of the parking problem because they are truly misused by a lot of people. that's one issue that i would truly look at. thank you. >> thank you. >> yes parking here in san francisco is a major cash cow for local government. they raise close to $200 million in revenue from parking here and the variable meters in my
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opinion is just another gimmick. it parks close to $6 an hour to park at a meter on any given day it's ridiculous. i am opposed to the variable rate meters and would take the residential permit one step further and allow those people to be allowed to use the parking permits to park on meters in shopping areas so i would propose that i am definitely opposed to send meters and saturday meters. it's a deterrent to patronizing small business. >> okay. the resulting economy has resulted in internet base for short term rentals and many of the rentals are illegal and the hotel tax is not collected. should the city legalize some or all of the arrangements and collect a hotel tax and we will
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begin with you -- i will be glad to repeat the question. >> i honestly don't know how you would enforce a law like that. of course everyone should pay their fair share but i don't know how you could enforce that. i believe we should standardize the inlaw units, maybe sure they're up to code and regulate any new units but as far as taxation i cannot see how you could actually enforce that and collect the taxes on it. >> thank you sir. mr. yee. >> cheryl i just want to make sure -- >> i can repeat it. there is internet base market for short base rentals and they sublease units to visitors and tourists and many are illegal and the city's hotel tax is not collected. should the city legalize these arrangements and
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collect the hotel tax? >> i traveled to different countries and i go to the internet and they have hotels and these rentals advertise and i have used these apartments as rentals for either a few days or one week and it's kind of nice to be there so i would support it and once you have it legalized you have again another base of revenues to tax and if they do advertisement and most will or go through an agency people would know about it, so it's not like -- right now we're gaining nothing and people are doing it anyways so why don't we take advantage of the fact we legalize it and actually increase our tax revenue. >> thank you sir. >> well, i know this issue got some press earlier this year but i don't know how widespread it is. i mean is this a real issue that really needs to be dealt
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with or is this solutions looking for a problem? i just don't know. i would to know how how widespread it is and if it's taking a bite of out of the city's tourist dollars or getting more press than it should? i don't know the answer to that. if it's indeed really quite widespread then yes it needs to be dealed with one way or another but i'm not an erkts economists and i would talk to others in city hall and the tax assessor and others how it can be done legitimately and fairly and forgive me if i am side stepping it but i would like to know more. >> thank you. mr. crowley. >> this is again something that i am not wholly vetted on and i
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am a member of the convention bureau and i believe they should be taxed but a moratorium or lien that you limit the number of nights before you're in full scale of hotels and hotel stays and i am not well vetod this and i would like to hear their responses as well. >> all right. >> i am a strong believer in property rights and if you own your home you should be able to do what you want with it without government interference and only 35% are owned by people and 65 are rented and under rent control and i would call this is a abuse under rent control if you're profiting under this and we should look at it very carefully.
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>> i agree. >> mr. garcia. >> we have a planning code and these outlawd and it's going on and look the other way and not do anything about it. things like that has an impact on the neighborhood and other people who are legitimately in that business and if we think about it we should do eir and get neighborhood input and if those businesses are allowed to exist certainly we should tax them. >> all right. thank you. ms. gavin. >> i am a strong proponent of the property rights. i am a renter however this is something that teachers have been doing this for a long time because this is one of the ways that they travel, and when i was high school teachers did this, and it was part of the curriculum when they came back and they would talk about different places around the world, and i really don't i think it's government
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over reaching and i really have a problem with that, and if it is illegal then we need to do outreach so that people need to know it again and if they are violating the law well then i am for enforcing the law. >> thank you ma'am. mr. lagos. >> short term rentals is something i know about having lived in mark merced because our landlord rents out them on a nightly or weekly basis and i am oppose to that. i am opposed at the whole idea of renting out short term rentals to people, so i would be opposed to taxation on those units because i am opposed to the whole idea of short term rentals because they deprive people from affordable housing and it's an end around rent control.
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>> mr. rogers. >> i think that's a good point. i have a frent who has a rental unit down stairs and has an agency that is providing her people that would stay there and they were people that were travelers and they would stay for a month and then she would look for another tenant there and it would be another two months before she got a tenant and stay a month or two weeks so it went, so she wasn't making a lot of money. the idea that it should be rented out as a steady income to people who wanted to stay there 12 months out of the year is really the ideal solution. >> all right. thank you sir. all right. we have two final questions and then we will go to closing remarks and first question is about measure f. it's on the ballot this november and require san francisco to
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come with a plan and drain the reservoir and bring it back to the original state. do you support it or oppose it and why? >> i oppose it and i like water and don't want my water bill increased and it's that simple to me. >> all right. >> i agree but i think it's more complex than that. i am against the draining of hetch hetchy and it's a shame and the voters and it's a shame. yosemite valley sister. it's a shame that the memory of john muir is held up because of that but it's our main source of water now. it's a major source of hydro
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electric power and relatively cheap and clean and to try to get that power elsewhere and the water elsewhere and all of the money, the resources, the pollution that would go into the demolition of this dam, i am afraid how we stand now in san francisco in 2012 losing it would be a big problem and i am voting no on f. >> thank you. mr. crowley. >> i was the head of the public utilities commission here in san francisco and wrote an op-ed piece about this piece of legislation. we're carry our city's power through this process, gravity ridden and four we 4.six billion dollars into the system and we are an enterprise here in kgzyl francisco. we have the best water and power in the world and i suggest to sell that would be a bigger carbon footprint and
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cost about $10 billion to erect another reservoir which we don't have in place at this point and time. >> thank you. >> definitely against measure f. we have these romantic idealized measures and it's well intentiond and let's restore the yosemite valley and sounds great but you need to think it through and what is being sold and f deserves a f and along those lines the supervisors passed a clean power. sounds great but take a look at what it really s it's the shell company and recycling the same power they provide and you're paying more for it and please take a look at these ideas that we have in san francisco and look at the reality. >> thank you. mr. garcia. >> it's hard to imagine it's
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well intentioned. it's suspicious why this is even on the ballot. in terms of the sanity behind it doesn't make sense and whether we should rule or govern by proposition in california and this is an example of when it's a really bad idea and i am certainly not going to vote yes on f. i am opposed to it. >> all right. ms. gavin. >> i am opposed to f and it's too expensive to implement and where in the world would our water from and -- good intengses and i think f is going the wrong way and i think that other municipalities buy water from us so we have to think of them also. where are they going to get their water from and where
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are we going to get our water from? so i say no to f. >> all right. mr. lagos. >> i agree with everyone and on the grounds it's too costly and if it's not needed. if it's not broken you don't have to fix it and i would vote no on f and in my opinion possibly a cynical ploy to privatize water distribution to san francisco, so i would definitely oppose it. >> thank you sir. mr. rogers. >> i too say no on f and the assumption with this proposition is that it would be torn down. they're studying it, so they're trying to plan or justify a reason to tear down the hetch hetchy dam and i think it's a bad idea. they have other places where they're studying water reuse here in san francisco, and we do need to
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have water reuse. san francisco is the only city in california that doesn't use any water reuse. orange county it's up to 65%. it's a very high%. we use the cleanest water in the nation to wash our streets. that just can't happen. we need water reuse but that doesn't mean we need to give up on hetch hetchy. >> i can scnt guarantee i won't hit the 15 seconds and the issue is not worth the paper it's written on and what comes to mind is tiny tim's song "let's dance through the tulips" and it's not going to happen and i vote absolutely notice. >> all right. we have
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agreement here. all right. our final question before our closing statements. how would you bring jobs to san francisco? we will begin with you mr. blie. >> i'm a geographer, not an economist. no, this is obviously a big issue and okay we gave a big tax break to twitter to come on into the city to set up on market street. is it effective? is it going to bring in other tech companys? is it going to revitalize mid-market? we can't say right now. this needs to be looked at in a year, five years, ten years. it's an experiment to try this sort of economic and engineering to try to do something like we did with
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twitter. i am not saying i oppose or favor it but it's a big step to do something like that. are big experiments like that paying off? we need to make sure we track this and does it revitalize areas and bring in jobs but tourism is such a huge part of who we are and someone that likes to play live music and part of my campaign and come see me play in westportal and we need to make sure tourism is robust and we talked about tourists issues like homelessness and clean streets. >> all right thank you. mr. crowley. >> and i also support the expansion of mus sonny center. >> he's stealing my thunder. i have been part of the tourist motion picture convention for years and responsible for
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millions of dollars of wages while i have been there. i know this subject inside and out. we are going upon the pres pus for prebuilding monsonny center and we can expand and by bringing people and tourist into the city that spend billions over the years and to go for treasure island and hunter's point and going forward. we have a project at pier 70 and moving well and it's robust and moving forward and i would move to say by building these place we put good, hard working blue collar wages together with white wages and we are doing better than we have before. >> thank you sir. >> has anyone been to the ice cream bar there? it's a neat
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idea. it's hip. it's for adults and it's packed on a friday night and it's a great thing and if you talk to the owner of the ice cream bar you will find the horror story that the city said no. it took two years to open this. if someone has a good idea why are we throwing up roadblocks. city hall needs to be a one stop shot and we don't run you around to five different departments and we say yes, yes, yes and that's how we build the local economy with small business. >> all right. mr. garcia. >> joe is right. we need to change the landscape and how we do business. we have decided that process is product here in san francisco. we tend to defy the code and vilify the individual who is trying to get
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a business started. we are not business friendly. in 2004 the city of san francisco passed prop i and required that the city do economic analysis every four years and strategy report. talks about how we improve the economy and one thing we are trying to change to the gross receipt tax and that is a start but we have to press this and business friendly city and benefit those in business and benefit those in need of job when is we have 8% unemployment here in san francisco. >> thank you sir. ms. gavin. >> i would invest in transportation, in public transportation it would be muni. i think a lot of areas that we need to upgrade muni and put it under ground. i would invest in the ferries. i think being a
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tourist city and many people commute to the city i think it's one area a lot of jobs would come from is invest in the public transportation. there si pending grant for the train to no where with the project. it's $942 million grant that san francisco may get and it's a lot of money, but that train isn't going to connect to the k, l, or m that see the break downs everyday. i know because i ride it so i would heavily invest in all of the public transportation. dc has a bullet train that goes 100 miles per hour. we can have one too. >> thank you. mr. lasos. >> this is not just a problem for san francisco. it's a problem for america. america is losing the jobs oversees and the corporations are